After watching geckos and cockroaches run off a ledge, pivot on their back legs, and turn up upside down on the bottom side of the ledge, researchers built a robot to do the same thing.

Because of their gravity-defying sticky feet and claws, geckos are one of the most often studied creatures by scientists looking to build robots and machines to mimic the clever tricks of nature. Here's another gecko trick: running off a ledge, swinging around, and hiding on the underside of ledge.

Geckos can pull off this disappearing act. Cockroaches can do. Both, it seems developed the maneuver to escape from clumsier pursuers who lack such gymnastic ability. Now, robots can do it, too.

The video comes from researchers led by Robert J. Full who published a study on their creation this week in the journal PLoS One. The team was studying roaches when they first saw the bugs execute this crazy pivot; later studies in the wild proved that geckos had the talent too. They then built a little bot called DASH (Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod), designed to succeed at the same turn-and-run.

For the animals, the key is their crawls, which grip the ledge and allow for the pivot. When the scientists clipped those claws, both roach and gecko still tried the maneuver, and nearly always failed. To replicate this in a bot, the team turned to something simple: velcro. The researchers put velcro hooks on the bottom of DASH and corresponding strips underneath the ledge.